..Furthermore, they reveal that the relative difficulty of the type of shift rats are required to perform has a direct impact on whether or not the mPFC contributes to this form of behavioral flexibility...

The nucleus accumbens: an interface between cognition, emotion, and action

Stan B FlorescoDepartment of Psychology and Brain Research Center, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z4, CanadaCereb Cortex 17:251-60. 2007

..These data suggest that the serial transfer of information between the BLA and ACC guides response selection when evaluating the value of an expected outcome relative to the costs of performing a particular action...

Dissociable roles for the nucleus accumbens core and shell in regulating set shifting

..The fact that similar neural circuits are recruited to solve these types of problems in both humans and animals suggests that animal models of decision making will prove useful in elucidating the mechanisms mediating these processes...

Stan B FlorescoDepartment of Psychology and Brain Research Center, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, CanadaNeuropsychopharmacology 31:297-309. 2006

..These findings may have important implications for developing novel treatments for cognitive deficits observed in disorders such as attentional deficit and hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia...

Perturbations in different forms of cost/benefit decision making induced by repeated amphetamine exposure

Stan B FlorescoDepartment of Psychology and Brain Research Center, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T1Z4, CanadaPsychopharmacology (Berl) 205:189-201. 2009

..Psychostimulant abuse has been linked to impairments in cost-benefit decision making...

Pharmacological enhancement of memory and executive functioning in laboratory animals

..These findings suggest that deficits in these forms of executive functioning observed in disorders linked to dysfunction of the DA system may be attributable in part to aberrant increases or decreases in mesoaccumbens DA activity...

..Thus, both the MD and VTA exert a complex gating action over PFC neural activity, either facilitating or inhibiting firing in the hippocampal-PFC pathway depending on the frequency and relative timing of the arrival of afferent input...

Differential effects of inactivation of the orbitofrontal cortex on strategy set-shifting and reversal learning

..Furthermore, the lack of effect of OFC inactivations on the set-shift indicates that this type of behavioral flexibility does not require cognitive operations related to reversal learning...

High levels of estradiol disrupt conditioned place preference learning, stimulus response learning and reference memory but have limited effects on working memory

L A GaleaDepartment of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver B C, Canada V6T 1Z4Behav Brain Res 126:115-26. 2001

..Taken together these findings suggest that high levels of estradiol inhibit reference memory, stimulus response learning, and amygdala-dependent appetitive conditioning while having little effect on working memory...

Annie E BlockDepartment of Psychology and Brain Research Center, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z4Cereb Cortex 17:1625-36. 2007

..These data indicate that set shifting is mediated by a distributed neural circuit, with separate neural pathways contributing dissociable components to this type of behavioral flexibility...

Acute stress impairs set-shifting but not reversal learning

K A ButtsDepartment of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, CanadaBehav Brain Res 252:222-9. 2013

..Thus, these data reveal that an immediate effect of acute stress is to impair mPFC-dependent cognition selectively by disrupting the ability to inhibit the use of a previously relevant cognitive strategy...

Matthew N HillDepartment of Psychology and the Brain Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, V6T1Z4, BC, CanadaPsychopharmacology (Berl) 187:245-59. 2006

..Cannabinoid CB1 receptors are expressed in the prefrontal cortex, but their role in mediating executive functions such as behavioral flexibility is unclear...

Systemic and local administration of estradiol into the prefrontal cortex or hippocampus differentially alters working memory

Katia J SinopoliDepartment of Psychology, The Program in Neuroscience, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4Neurobiol Learn Mem 86:293-304. 2006

..These data provide further evidence for the notion that estradiol can dose-dependently alter memory processes and suggest that facilitation or disruptions of working memory by estradiol are site- and time-specific...

Disruptions in spatial working memory, but not short-term memory, induced by repeated ketamine exposure

..However, lesions of the OFC in rats have both increased and decreased impulsivity in delay-discounting paradigms, where impulsive choice is defined as the selection of small immediate over larger delayed rewards...

..Furthermore, these findings suggest that LTD may be a molecular mechanism that facilitates the selective modification of a learned association while leaving intact the ability to form a new memory...

Targeted disruption of the Huntington's disease gene results in embryonic lethality and behavioral and morphological changes in heterozygotes

J NasirDepartment of Medical Genetics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, CanadaCell 81:811-23. 1995

..These studies show that the HD gene is essential for postimplantation development and that it may play an important role in normal functioning of the basal ganglia...

Suppression of amygdalar endocannabinoid signaling by stress contributes to activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis